Chapter Text
In addition to the official rules that had been set in place by Captain Cold, there were a number of unspoken rules that governed the Rogues’ shared hideouts. Lisa could take as long in the shower as she wanted. Mick was not allowed near anything remotely flammable, no matter how good he was at cooking. Hartley was not to be woken before 10 AM. Digger’s room was a health hazard that should be avoided at all costs. Anyone who valued their sanity should stay out of arguments between Len and Roscoe. If you didn’t know where Evan was, it was best not to ask. No one should touch Sam’s precious hair products. All of these unspoken rules were important, but the most important unspoken rule of all was that James should never, ever, ever be allowed to become bored. A bored James quickly became an inventive James, and an inventive James was a very dangerous, very irritating James. Unfortunately, after a particularly frustrating botched heist that had gotten Hartley and Mark injured and very nearly gotten them all arrested, the Rogues had let themselves forget this unspoken rule. Busy as they were tending to their injuries, arguing over whose fault it was that the heist had gone wrong, and getting drunk, they had left James to his own devices. After a few minutes of being generally ignored, James had retreated to his room so that he could scheme up a way to entertain himself.
“Mixing up the temperature gauge on the shower? No, I did that last month. I don’t want to repeat myself. Adding some mild laxatives to somebody’s food? Ehh…too juvenile. If Axel could come up with it, it’s not clever enough for me. Making them think the police have come to arrest them? Ehh, that’d be funny, but Cold made it pretty clear that he’d give me a black eye if I ever pulled that stunt again, and I don’t want to ruin my angelic good looks. Mess around with the Flash? Well, I was gonna do that anyway. I need something above and beyond that if I really want a good time.” As he paced around the room, James’ eye suddenly fell on a letter that he had recently received in the mail. The circus where he’d grown up was back in town, and his beloved parents had sent him a letter saying that they wanted to see him. A sly smile spread across James’ face.
“Now there’s an idea. If I’m going to have a reunion with my folks, why not give all my pals the same opportunity?” James’ smile widened as the wheels in his head began to turn. He wanted his folks to have the very best, so what better place to have the Rogues’ family reunion than a super-pricey, super-exclusive restaurant like the Starlight Grove? Sure, he couldn’t afford it, but Hartley’s folks were as rich as Bruce Wayne. They’d be able to foot the bill no problem. Of course, they wouldn’t agree to come if they knew that he was the one providing the invitations, but that wouldn’t be a problem for the world’s greatest conman. All he would have to do was send them a letter from General Vreeland promising a lucrative business deal, and they would make arrangements for the dinner all on their own. And their faces when they realized that they’d been played by a carny brat would be priceless !
Once James had determined the location for the big family get-together, he slipped out of the Rogues’ latest hideout and headed for the library in order to compile the guest list for his family reunion. Upon his arrival, he walked up to one of the librarians, quickly glanced at her nametag and the engagement ring on her left hand, and flashed her his biggest, most charming smile.
“Hello, Miss Grant. My name’s JJ Reynard, and I’ve been working on this genealogy project as a birthday present for my wife. We’ve been married a little over three months now, and I want this birthday to be really special for her. Mindy’s been interested in her family history for ages, but she’s never really had the time to look it up. She’s really busy working as a linguistics professor at Central City University, and so I decided to surprise her by tracking down her genealogy for her. Anyway, her family’s lived in the area for ages, and so I figured that at least one of Central City’s wonderful public libraries would have some records. I know this is presumptuous, but would you mind giving me access to your record room? Mindy’s birthday is only a month from now, and I want the project to be finished in time for her big day.” Predictably, the librarian practically swooned.
“Of course I don’t mind! I’m engaged to be married myself here soon, and I totally understand why you’re so eager to give your wife the birthday gift of her dreams. Here’s the key. Just don’t take anything out of the room, okay?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. Thank you so much! And tell your fiancé hello for me. He’s lucky to be marrying such a beautiful young lady.” The librarian blushed.
“Aww, thanks. Have fun researching!” James waved good-bye to the young librarian, walked down the stairs to the library’s room of records, used his key to unlock the door, and slipped inside. Figuring that finding his fellow Rogues’ birth annoucements would be a good place to start, he found the file cabinet that contained alphabetized birth records and started digging through it. Frustratingly, he only found four birth announcements: one for Sam, who had been born to Percival and Martha Scudder, one for that brat Axel, born to Alice Strickland and Alan Walker, one for Roscoe, who had been born to Reginald and Rosa Dillon, and one for Hartley, who had, of course, been born to Osgood and Rachel Rathaway. Hartley’s birth announcement had made the front page of the newspaper it had been printed in, which was amusing but not especially useful as a source of information. None of the other Rogues had birth records on file.
With this avenue exhausted, James instead started looking through the crime files, in the hopes that one of the reports on his fellow Rogues might include information on their parents. Most of the Rogues had their own subsections in this file, and James briefly got distracted by the articles in his own subsection before turning his attention to the subsection marked “Snart”. Much to James’ pleased surprise, the earliest article in this subsection was dated to before Len had been born and detailed the firing of Officer Lawrence Snart for misconduct. The article mentioned that the officer had a number of suspected mob ties, but was mainly focused on the fact that the ex-Officer had hastily married a pregnant teenage girl named Shirley St. Martin shortly before he was fired by the police department. Undoubtedly, this Shirley was Cold’s mother, and although James had no intention of inviting a monster like Larry Snart to his family get-together, he thought it might be interesting to track down Mommy Snart and invite her to the party. Tabling her name for later, he started flipping through Mardon’s files. Although none of the articles on Mark mentioned his parents by name, there were a few articles about Mark’s allegedly perfect older brother Clyde mixed in with the articles about Mark’s crimes, and one of these articles included the names of the brothers’ parents: Matías and Paloma Mardon. The article also noted that the family had immigrated to the United States from Guatemala. Huh. James hadn’t known that Mark was an immigrant. Although that did explain why he didn’t have a birth announcement in the library’s files. Digger and Evan’s sections predictably provided no information, while the articles about Mick merely confirmed the fact that his parents had been killed in a house fire. Finally, a brief glance at Sam’s section had turned up a few articles from very early in his life, including a brief blurb noting that Percival Scudder had died at the age of 25 of a particularly malignant form of prostate cancer. Deciding that he had exhausted his resources, James left the records room, locked it behind him, returned the key to the front desk, grabbed a blank piece of printer paper, found an address book, pulled out a pen, and started writing down addresses.
Martha Scudder: 7685 Baker Street, Apt. 953. Keystone City, KS, 18422.
Matías and Paloma Mardon: 3953 Pine Tree Lane. Bridgeville, MO, 97854.
Reginald and Rosa Dillon: 3442 Oak Tree Blvd. Bridgeville, MO, 97854.
Shirley St. Martin: 26564 Morrow Street, Apt. 343. Keystone City, KS, 18422.
Rathaway Publishing, Ltd.: 2865 Infantino Street. Central City, MO, 15684.
Alice Strickland: 1450 Bates Lane, Apt. 635. Keystone City, KS, 18422.
Alan (and Barbie?) Walker: 3845 Meadowlark Street. North Ridge, MO, 15842.
Having finished with the address book, James re-shelved it and smiled to himself. It really was criminal how easy it was to find people’s addresses if you had the right motivation. Since he already knew his parents’ current address, all he needed to do now was track down Digger’s parents (no easy task, since they lived in Australia), find the address of the orphanage that Evan had grown up in, and figure out the home address of the Rathways. While sending a letter to their office might work, James knew that he had a much better chance of actually contacting them if he could find a way to send a letter to their estate instead. In the hopes of finding all three, James turned to the wonderful world of the Internet. Evan rarely, if ever, spoke in detail about his past, but he had once mentioned to James that the orphanage he was from was located in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. James promptly googled “orphanages in Kirkcaldy” and found one that was run by a Ms. Eva McCulloch. Grinning, James jotted down the provided address.
Hope Springs Orphanage: 30 North Crescent, Kirkcaldy. KY1 1AG
Finding the Rathaway estate was next. It took some digging, and a tiny bit of hacking, but Googling “Rathaway estate address” proved to be surprisingly effective. While his letter would still probably get screened by about three dozen people before it got to Hartley’s snobby folks, at least he had an address now. Oh, well. He’d just have to make sure his business letter was especially convincing.
Osgood and Rachel Rathaway: 594 Gardner Fox Row. Ridgeway Hills, MO, 45353.
And now for Digger’s folks. What did he know about Digger? Digger talked about his past quite frequently while drunk, but the information Digger gave whilst inebriated was not at all reliable. Outside of his frequent drunken spells, the only information about his childhood that Digger had ever given anyone was the fact that his mother’s name was Betty and that he was from Korumburra. So James was looking for a Betty Harkness who lived in Korumburra, Australia. This might be a bit difficult, but James was determined to have his fun. No matter how long it took, he would find a way to invite Digger’s parents to the Rogue Family Reunion.
Forty-five minutes later, James had finally dug up what he assumed was the address of Digger’s parents, and he promptly jotted it down.
Ian and Betty Harkness: 476 McLaughlin Way, 6545, Korumburra, Victoria, Australia.
Having completed his mission to locate the addresses of all of his fellow Rogues’ parents, James left the library and went back to the Rogues’ hideout. He slipped into his room through his window, sat down at his desk, and started composing the invitations for what he was sure would be the most entertaining family reunion of all time.